Free The Kissing Game by Suzanne Brockmann

week it'll rain, and I'll sleep all day long. Maybe sometime in the next century I'll actually get a date ….
    Simon turned several pages, looking for his name. Ah-ha!
    Saw Simon downtown. Leila's due in for a visit next week. I can't wait to see her—it's been too long ….
She went on to write about her longstanding friendship with Simon's sister. Not one more word about Simon. He turned toward the back of the notebook.
    … the
last time
I'll
ever
wear a two-piece
bathing suit,
she'd written at the top of the page, the underlined words catching his eye.
    I should have known. I should have kept my T-shirt on, but it was so damn hot. I should have just sweated. I should have known that bunch was going to be trouble, with all their rude comments and innuendos.
    I was helping the skinny guy pull in a fish. I didn't even feel the knife blade as the fat guy cut the back strap of my bathing suit. But just like that I was half naked.
    It happened so fast. It's all a jumble of noises, hoots of laughter, and shouting. My own shouting. A blur of sensations, streaks of movement, action caught in a strobe light, embedded forever in my memory, playing over and over and over. I want it to go away. Maybe if I write it down ….
    I let go of the fishing pole, try to cover myself. A splash—the pole and the skinny man go overboard. The fat man laughs loud, wheezy laughter. His eyes are red and watery from too much beer and sun. “Hey, Hank, that's one hell of a pair you caught!” Anger—
    I was furious. How dare you? Groping hands, squeezing, touching my body, the stink of alcohol on his breath, more laughter—they're all laughing. I kick out, miss my target, connect with his thigh, mad as hell, how dare you? How
dare
you?
    Simon felt as if he were choking, knowing that he was reading the words Frankie had written mere hours after she'd been attacked. He knew without a doubt that this was the incident that had made her quit her job at the marina, the job she had chartering Preston Seaholm's fishing boat. He turned the page, no longer even pretending not to read the words written there.
    I kick him again and he's mad too, rips off what's left of my bathing suit top, pushes me down hard. On the deck on my back, knock over a bait bucket. Awash with briny water, little fish jumping, flopping, just like me, skittering on my elbows, trying to get away.
    He read what she had written, heard the fear now mixed in with the anger. His heart was in histhroat. Dear God, had she been raped? Had she not even told Leila the truth about what had happened that awful day? Simon knew with a dreadful certainty that whatever had happened, the truth was written right there, in that notebook. All he had to do to find out was to keep reading.
    This can't be happening. Can't be …. He's on top of me—
    Frankie whisked her diary away from him. “Dam mit, Simon, didn't you hear what I just said? Doesn't privacy mean
any
thing to you?”
    Simon looked up into the hot brown of Frankie's eyes and saw her gaze falter at the expression on his face. He reached for the diary, needing to finish reading, needing to know what had really happened. She pulled it away from him, so he reached for her instead.
    Her eyes were wide with shock, her mouth opened slightly, and Simon realized there were tears in his own eyes.
    “God, Frankie!” He pulled her toward him, enveloping her in his arms, burying his face in the sweetness of her short dark hair.
    He was shaking with anger and outrage and fear. How could something that awful have happened to her here on Sunrise Key? He had prob ably been sitting at his desk that day. He'd probably been looking out the window of his home office at the crystal blue of the ocean, talking on the phone, laughing and joking—while she was lying on her back on the deck of the fishing boat. It killed him that he'd never known. It killed him that she'd never sought comfort from him.
    He was comforting her now, but it was much, much too late. He